Editorial: Fracking study points to health costs
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Enthusiastic gas-drilling advocates in the Legislature long have fallen over themselves in their haste to get out of the industry’s way. Their zeal, for most of two decades, included a prohibition on using public money to conduct studies on the industry’s public health impact.
Former Gov. Tom Wolf finally commissioned a $2.5 million study in 2019 by public health researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. Their recently released results demonstrate why the pro-industry lawmakers resisted such analyses.
It is extremely difficult to tie any particular disease in an individual or a group to any particular environmental factor, even when many people in close proximity suffer the same ill health effects. This study was not designed to do that. Rather, it examined the incidence of certain diseases within certain distances of active gas wells and compared them with incidence of the same diseases where drilling is not an issue.
It found that people of all ages living near wells in heavily drilled areas of Western Pennsylvania experienced higher rates of severe asthma than those elsewhere and that children in those areas were more likely to develop a form of lymphoma that otherwise is rare among children.
The Pennsylvania study follows others of drilling fields elsewhere in the United States that found higher rates of asthma, some cancers, low birth weights and more among people who live close to drilling operations.
Edward Keyter, a retired pediatrician and a member of the study’s advisory board, told the Associated Press that the asthma finding is a “bombshell.” And he asked a question that should be directed at lawmakers wearing their pro-drilling blinders: “Why is anyone surprised about that?”
Since the drilling boom began in Pennsylvania between 2005 and 2010, the state government has played a game of catch-up, long hindered by lawmakers who refused to conduct studies relative to public health.
With information from the new study in hand, lawmakers and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration should ensure the strongest possible regulations are in place to protect public health from the inevitable impact of heavy industry on a massive scale.
—The Citizens’ Voice (Wilkes-Barre)
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre